Page 48 of Rage of the Fallen

Rage’s darkness boiled around us, desperate now. “You cannot hold me. I am eternal. I am?—”

“You are really starting to piss me off,” I cut in, channeling some of Damon’s snark. The harp’s song reached a fever pitch as we closed in on the pillar.

The seven artifacts sang in harmony, their light creating a cage of pure power around Rage’s writhing darkness that grew tighter, brighter, until the chapel itself pulsed with ancient magic.

“NO!” Rage’s form thrashed wildly, his darkness trying to seep through any crack, any shadow. “I possessed your mate. I know your fears, your weaknesses?—”

“Yeah, about that,” Justice’s voice rang with quiet fury. “Bad move.” He raised the mirror higher, its light cutting through Rage’s attempts to reform.

The pillar’s dragons moved again, their stone eyes tracking our progress. Maci’s frozen form seemed to watch us, her eternal prison waiting to claim another.

“Almost there,” Brody called. “Hold the line!”

“Hold the line?” Damon scoffed, but his hands were rock-steady on the phoenix feather. “How about ‘hurry the hell up before shadow-boy here loses his mind?’”

Rage’s darkness contracted suddenly, then exploded outward with devastating force. The blast knocked us all back a step, but our circle held. The artifacts’ light caught his darkness like a net, holding him fast.

“You want eternal?” I felt the words rise from somewhere deep inside, powered by fury at what he’d done to Justice, to all of us. “Then be eternal in stone.”

The harp’s song crescendoed, and the other artifacts responded in kind. Light erupted from all seven points, connecting in a perfect star pattern that centered on the pillar. Rage’s scream of denial shook the chapel foundations.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

His darkness began to crystallize, as Maci’s scales had. But where she had steadily turned to stone, Rage’s transformation was different. His shadows tried to split apart, to escape, but each tendril of darkness caught in our light turned solid, gray, eternal.

“This cannot be!” His voice fragmented, echoing off stone walls. “I am Rage! I am darkness. I am?—”

“You are done,” I retorted, pouring every ounce of determination into the harp’s song. The pillar’s dragons writhed faster, making space beside Maci’s frozen form.

“Together!” Brody shouted as Rage made one last desperate attempt to break free.

“Not so tough without your dragon, are you?” Damon’s blade flashed through what remained of Rage’s fluid form, herding him closer to the pillar.

Justice’s gaze met mine across the circle of light. At that moment, I saw everything he couldn’t say. His gratitude, his love, his relief at being free of this monster’s influence.

Rage’s form spiraled inward, drawn into the pillar’s eternal dance. His darkness turned to stone in waves, like ink freezing in mid-splash. His final scream cut off as the transformationreached what passed for his head, leaving only those void-black eyes burning with helpless fury before they, too, became nothing but stone.

The chapel fell silent except for our ragged breathing. Where Rage’s darkness had boiled and writhed moments before was only stone, a twisted, beautiful spiral of shadows caught mid-flight, forever entwined with Maci’s dragon form around the Apprentice Pillar.

My legs gave out, and Justice caught me before I hit the floor. The harp slipped from my trembling fingers, its song finally quiet. Looking up into his brown eyes—his own eyes, not Rage’s crimson gaze—made everything we’d done worth it.

“He’s really gone,” Justice whispered. The golden healing marks under his skin pulsed like a settling heartbeat as his arms tightened around me. “I can’t feel him anymore. That darkness he left inside me…”

“Is gone,” I finished, reaching up to trace one of the fading marks on his cheek. My hand shook, the aftermath of fear and adrenaline making me unsteady. We’d come so close to losing each other, to losing everything.

“If you two start making out again, I’m leaving,” Damon announced, but his voice lacked its usual bite. Even he looked drained, leaning against a pew as he stared at our handiwork on the pillar.

I couldn’t stop touching Justice, reassuring myself that he was here, he was whole, he was himself again.

“We did it,” I murmured against his chest. “We really did it.”

The world seemed to shift then, like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place. Maybe it was the aftermath of using all seven artifacts, or maybe it was time, but suddenly, memories flooded back. Memories of my father, the ones that had been locked away for so long.

His smile. His laugh. Teaching me to hunt. The way he’d look at Mom like she hung the moon. The last time I saw him…

My knees buckled again, and this time, Justice lowered us both to the floor.

“Sawyer?” His voice was thick with concern.

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